I noticed something about Necromancer; also, synergy

[Blaine]

Note: I'm an original Grim Dawn supporter and old TQ fan, but I haven't played since long before Ashes of Malmouth. In fact, most of my playtime (~140 hours) was pre-v1.0. I'm thinking about getting the expansion and picking it up again.

The necromancer is one of the original modern fantasy archetypes. J.R.R. Tolkien started writing LotR in 1937. At this point, anyone with a Western education or who is remotely interested in fantasy knows the name Sauron: the Necromancer, the Dark Lord of Mordor, protege of Morgoth, the most powerful of the Maia, etc.

Sauron called foul creatures and spirits of the dead, and bound them to himself. Heck, he even bound the living to himself with his rings scam, which was the entire plot of the books.

Since then, necromancers have been raising the dead left and right. It's their thing, and they go together like mice and cheese, gorillas and bananas, tax season and clinical depression, beans and toast (for the Brits), or fries and ketchup (for the Americans).

However, as I was browsing builds (I always make my own, but like to get an idea of what other players do) in the latest compilation on the Crate official forums, I realized there were very few Necromancer builds that actually include pets. I did the (very simple) counting and math, and here's how it turned out:

• of 94 total Occultist builds, 16 were pet builds (17%)
  
• of 95 total Shaman builds, 12 were pet builds (12.5%)
  
• of 82 total Necromancer builds, 5 were pet builds (6%)

The numbers speak for themselves. While people can make any kinds of builds they want and this isn't exactly scientific, as far as the dedicated Grim Dawn player base is concerned in the latest versions of GD, Necromancer seems to have far fewer attractive pet build combinations than the other two masteries offering pets.

Seems to me that synergy is the main culprit. This game has so many damage types in many pairings and combinations, and I've noticed you have to be very careful not to spread your attack damage types too thinly or else your bonuses from gear, gems and such become far less effective and your gear choices increasingly limited. In fact, many builds rely on just one damage type, as anyone can plainly see from browsing the builds list (and anyone's build posts, really).

I'm also a Path of Exile player, and actually one of the main complaints about GD that I hear from some of my friends in PoE is that there are too many resistances and way too many damage types. For me personally, the quantity doesn't bother me, but the limited build synergy options (due to said quantity of damage types) does. Sure there are 28 class combos, but the mixing and matching you can do is at all times constrained by the need to specialize in one or maybe two damage types (builds with 3-4 types exist, but are much rarer, and usually types 3 and 4 are inefficient, unbonused extras).

Just curious how others, especially those more experienced with the game in its current state, feel about this topic.

[Faust Wither]

Originally posted by Blaine:

• of 94 total Occultist builds, 16 were pet builds (17%)
  
• of 95 total Shaman builds, 12 were pet builds (12.5%)
  
• of 82 total Necromancer builds, 5 were pet builds (6%)

The numbers speak for themselves. While people can make any kinds of builds they want and this isn't exactly scientific, as far as the dedicated Grim Dawn player base is concerned in the latest versions of GD, Necromancer seems to have far fewer attractive pet build combinations than the other two masteries offering pets.

Seems to me that synergy is the main culprit. This game has so many damage types in many pairings and combinations, and I've noticed you have to be very careful not to spread your attack damage types too thinly or else your bonuses from gear, gems and such become far less effective and your gear choices increasingly limited. In fact, many builds rely on just one damage type, as anyone can plainly see from browsing the builds list (and anyone's build posts, really)

i'm playing necromancer class only and devoted to pet build. as you say necromancer with pet are not good with synergy, the pet that doesn't has duration is low capability to survive, and it highly depend on other class skill such blood of dreeg or wendigo totem to heal thier minion, without a heal skeleton will die from 4 or 6 hit from bosses enemy, other than that duration pet are loot usefull and effiecient but you need go hybird for this. and skeleton has much diffrent type of damage, vitality, fire, physical and piercing but you can ignore it by making them do devotion skill and increase all damage. and is hard to balancing player survivability, you had good and powerfull pet damage, but you will died faster. diffrent from other class that can go tanking and leeching some HP from enemy, pet build usualy rely on a healing skill that has cooldown. so yea it's really hard to make pet build that jack of all trades.

i think necromancer deserve a item that allowing raise dead summoning 6 skeleton at once or more so we can just go all damage and ignoring pet resistance.

[Amigo]

The thing with pet builds is they are kinda boring. They lack the dynamic of other builds and they require full commitment afaik. Meaning you need ti put everything into pet bonuses or they won't survive and become useless.

[ZarahNeander]

Originally posted by Blaine:

:::::constrained by the need to specialize in one or maybe two damage types (builds with 3-4 types exist, but are much rarer, and usually types 3 and 4 are inefficient, unbonused extras).

Synergy is not limited to dmg channels though. I.e Inquisitor used for auras/heal/seal. Shaman can be used for general sturdiness and, again i.e, wind devil as devotion deliverer. Occultist for resist shred/attack speed/healing....you get the picture

[powbam]

One thing to keep in mind, Occultist (from nearly the beginning) and Shaman (the latter half of Early Access) have been out a lot longer while Necromancer has been out about a year and a half.

Regarding synergy, Zantai (and/or Crate) has said that they agree that there are too many damage types and if they ever do GD2 it is likely that will be toned down somewhat. The more masteries they put in the game the more time consuming and difficult it becomes to create synergy among the old and new masteries. It isn't just the mastery skills they have to worry about, they have to retrofit this synergy among existing (and new) items as well as in the Devotions. Plus new skill animations and lore and gear etc. And then they have to bring some semblance of balance to it all on top of it. Ponder it for a bit and try to wrap your head around that task.

Can't say I envy them that job but it does give you an appreciation for the scale of the job they do when adding new masteries. I'd been hoping for 2 new masteries with this expac but the more I think on it the less I blame them for doing only one.

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=691270#post691270

Originally posted by Zantai:

That seems a bit dramatic. I think there's a point where too many damage types actually hinders buildcrafting. It makes class synergies more complicated and more difficult to parse for the typical player. It also means that each damage type doesn't feel as unique.

To combat that to a degree, we've leaned towards having damage pairs that are frequently seen together (ex. Chaos and Vitality, or Cold and Lightning). Conversion helped as well.

I'm not convinced that culling some damage types would hurt build diversity. I think it would make your choices feel more meaningful, which is why if there is a GD2 some day, it will definitely be a step we will be taking. Most certainly you would see flat and dot damage share modifiers. Elemental would likely be removed as it only complicates things and requires additional explanation.

[Blaine]

Originally posted by Amigo:

The thing with pet builds is they are kinda boring. They lack the dynamic of other builds and they require full commitment afaik. Meaning you need ti put everything into pet bonuses or they won't survive and become useless.

Yeah, I'm aware. Pet builds aren't as popular with enthusiasts (or in general) because to some extent, your pets are playing the game for you.

Still, what matters here is proportion, not popularity. People do play pet builds. It just seems like something went awry when what should be the premiere pet-based mastery has by far the fewest pet builds of all pet-related masteries in the official forum's build compilation. There are over twice as many pet builds for Shaman, and nearly three times as many for Occultist.

Almost 95% of the time, people use Necromancer for something other than pets. And yeah, the fact that you either have to focus heavily on minions or not at all is definitely a factor... realistically, pets are a damage type unto themselves, except of course that they typically all do different types of damage.

Originally posted by ZarahNeander:

Synergy is not limited to dmg channels though. I.e Inquisitor used for auras/heal/seal. Shaman can be used for general sturdiness and, again i.e, wind devil as devotion deliverer. Occultist for resist shred/attack speed/healing....you get the picture

That's true. Some builds are heavily invested in one mastery and grab, say, a passive and one skill line from another. They're still constrained by damage channels when doing that, though.

The other thing is, new players (like me, pretty much; I've played before, but ages ago) aren't yet aware of the existence of gear that can make otherwise unviable builds viable, usually due to some form of damage conversion.

Personally I'd be a lot happier if damage bonuses from gear were more general, so that using several abilities each with different combinations of damage types was viable (the class system is mix-and-match after all), but I know the game mechanics design is set in stone now.

Originally posted by powbam:

One thing to keep in mind, Occultist (from nearly the beginning) and Shaman (the latter half of Early Access) have been out a lot longer while Necromancer has been out about a year and a half.

I did consider this, but the newness of Necromancer shouldn't really matter much proportionally or otherwise, because there are almost as many Necromancer builds (approx. 85) as there are Occultist and Shaman builds (both approx. 95).

Originally posted by powbam:

Regarding synergy, Zantai (and/or Crate) has said that they agree that there are too many damage types and if they ever do GD2 it is likely that will be toned down somewhat. The more masteries they put in the game the more time consuming and difficult it becomes to create synergy among the old and new masteries. It isn't just the mastery skills they have to worry about, they have to retrofit this synergy among existing (and new) items as well as in the Devotions. Plus new skill animations and lore and gear etc. And then they have to bring some semblance of balance to it all on top of it. Ponder it for a bit and try to wrap your head around that task.

Oh, I have pondered it; I've known they went overboard with damage types and resistances for years now. I think they did it for "flavor" and it backfired on them mechanically.

It's good to know Crate more-or-less agree with my assessment, at least in a general and/or logistical sense. I'm just glad I'm not the lone guy here spewing complete crazy talk.

[powbam]

Originally posted by Blaine:

Oh, I have pondered it; I've known they went overboard with damage types and resistances for years now. I think they did it for "flavor" and it backfired on them mechanically.

Indeed. There was another comment by Zantai somewhere on the same topic where he also said that in GD2 the player would likely not have Aether/Chaos damage types available (the enemies tho, perhaps, would). Both of which are certainly "flavor" damage-types.

[Amigo]

I guess Diablo 3 necromancer is a more active variant of a pet oriented class. Future ARPGs need to reimagine pet class gameplay somehow or drop it altogether. Minions need to be a part of your character and not a separate entity you are required to put points into.

[Faust Wither]

Originally posted by Amigo:

I guess Diablo 3 necromancer is a more active variant of a pet oriented class. Future ARPGs need to reimagine pet class gameplay somehow or drop it altogether.

because we don't have enough skill point to maxed all in here, not like diablo 3. pet always ended up 16 pet summon level skill,12 pet aura or important skill & 1 pet active skill or pet powerup skill. but like i said before, if you had very strong pet you will lack at survivability not to mention your DA and OA is usualy damn low for pet build. i can finish the game in ultimate hardcore but mostly i'm always avoid fighting nemesis ultimate, not until i have atleast 60% of endgame item.

[Zantai]

I think you may be reading into those numbers a little too much.

Necromancer is very popular for pet builds, and extremely successful at them.

[FlamingX21]

Originally posted by Zantai:

I think you may be reading into those numbers a little too much.

Necromancer is very popular for pet builds, and extremely successful at them.

Devs know's what's up... xD

[MedeaFleecestealer]

Builds in the compendium aren't the be all and end all of build possibilities. I suggest you have a look at Maya's pet builds http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/member.php?u=53127 and also sigatrev's http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/member.php?u=50649

[Kelthorian]

I would say one reason as mentioned by others is that pet builds in GD require you to go very heavy into items and devotions with pet bonuses.

Usually said items are made for summoners and the differences between them is the classes they cater to, which pets they focus on from said classes and finally damage and other related bonuses.

Whereas if you don't go for the pets in those 3 classes you suddenly have way more options in what combos you can go with.

And regarding the number of damage types and resistances. I sorta like the large variety and at the same time dislike it. One of the pros of the large selection obviously being the many variances of builds one can make. Then you realise that they couldn't have really thought of or had the time to make unique items for every possible build and then might realise that your specific combo might have little end game equipment support.

It's a balancing act of pro's and con's.

[ZarahNeander]

Damage channels: we need might & magic, that's enough. Also that inflation of classes, streamline to grunt/sniper/medic, more only confuses the new player. Then sell the product to Blizz as 'Diablo amoral' and get filthy rich

[Včelí medvídek]

Various pet damage bonuses can be successfuly mitigated with focus +All damage bonuses that are lamost always presented.

I run pet cabalist with Lost soul set - one of nice side of this that it turn Hellhound damage to vitality that scale with most necro abilities, while bond of Bysmiel is all damage and blood of dreeg the same + healing. It can be even boosrted with curse of frailty and Vurnebality that benefit all necro pets too. Absolutely no issue with synergies here. Even though most headache gives me variety of skeleton summons damage (warrior, mage, archer, revenant..) but its not so big deal as it sound.

Have to say it is likely my "most sucessful" build that finished Ultimate and all end game zones (+ 1- 170 Gladiator) with hands in pocket and never died. Choosed majority fo resisatnce and healing devotions that benefit both myself and pets so even skeletons almost never die. Little boring indeed but thats it (likely not able ever beat Lokarr or other top celestials with it.. but that was never purpose)

[Matthew]

Over-analyzing nothing really.

A lot of the dedicated forum posters, the ones who typically make said builds, don't generally like playing pet builds. This alone will skew the number of pet builds you see posted.

Nor does the number of pet builds reflect how effective a mastery is for pets. Your logic is falling into the thought of equality of outcome, which is a terrible way to balance things since it fails to properly acknowledge reasons for ratio discrepencies.